Page 65 of The Henna Artist

Each of Radha’s accusations felt like a slap on my cheek.

“She has to support herself.” Kanta took Radha’s hand in hers. “And you. And Malik. She’s brave, and she’s very fierce. You two are a lot alike, you know.”

Alike? I’d never thought Radha and I shared anything but the watercolors of our eyes.

“I’m lucky, Radha,” Kanta continued. “I’ve never had to support myself. Never had to worry about money. Even now my father helps us out when Manu’s civil salary falls short of our expenses. My situation is very different from yours.” She sighed. “As much as I would like it to be different for you, it’s not. You must think about money—how to pay rent, how to afford a new pair of shoes, food. As your sister has always done. I accept responsibility for what I’ve done, Radha. Your sister’s not to blame. And neither are you.”

Radha let go of Kanta’s hand. “First Jiji arranges Ravi’s marriage to someone else! Then you tell me to kill my baby?”

Kanta sat back. “I want you to have a good life, Radha.” With a gentle motion, Kanta rubbed my sister’s back. “Allof us are on your side. But you’re too young to be a mother. Your life has barely started,bheti. You can do so much more. More and more women—”

“Stop!” Radha sobbed. She squeezed her eyes, causing more tears to fall. Her cheeks turned pink.

Wearily, Kanta stood. “Let’s leave it for now, Lakshmi.”

The ceiling fan slowed, then stopped turning altogether.

Kanta grunted. “Baap re baap!Three times today already, the electricity has quit. Only April and it’s started to boil.” She wiped the perspiration on her neck with her sari. “We will think of something. But for now we must keep our own counsel—you, me, Radha and Manu.” She looked at me. “Radha can stay with us until we sort this out.” She didn’t look at either of us when she said this, probably to save us the embarrassment of acknowledging the wide breach between us.

Kanta pulled herpalluover her shoulders and tucked it into her petticoat. “Perhaps some tea will cool us all down?”

I thought back to the holiday party on the Singh estate where it had all started. Where Ravi and Radha had met. Where Samir had told me about the palace commission. At the beginning of that evening, I had felt hopeful; Radha and I would come to an understanding, as sisters. She was learning the ways of the city. I was helping her. But that night had ended altogether differently, in recriminations and hurt feelings.

I didn’t need tea. I needed to clear my head. I made my excuses and left, noticing the relief on Kanta’s face.

THIRTEEN

I’d asked Malik to cancel our appointments for the day. I had nowhere I had to be. So after leaving Kanta’s house, I walked. For hours. Without a destination. I thought and thought. About my failures. I’d failed as a wife to Hari. Failed as a daughter to my parents. Failed as a sister to Radha. Failed, even, to finish my house. The courtyard was bare dirt; the back fence, incomplete. The fraying cot was still fraying. All I had ever wanted was work that sustained me. What would happen to that now?

I imagined the fallout from Radha’s pregnancy. The whispers behind my back. Rumors that started first with servants, then spread like wildfire to my ladies. The nervous glances, the barely disguised scorn, the outright scoldings. I wouldn’t be able to hold my head up anywhere. Even shopkeepers in the Refugee Market might refuse to cater to me. I grew more hopeless by the hour, wondering how I would pay Samir back for my loan if my ladies abandoned me.

By dinnertime, I found myself in GulabNagar, the Pleasure District. As in Agra, there was a house here to satisfy every taste, and every purse. First came the tumbledown shacks. Prostitutes with untidy hair and homemade petticoats leaned against the walls, or sat on chairs in open doorways: village girls of ten or twelve, runaways and orphans both, two to three rupees for the asking. Perhaps this was where Hari was spending his days. Helping these girls in a way I had failed to.

Past the shacks stood dignified bungalows, crumbling from age and neglect. Here, women were slightly older, kohl-eyed, hardened. They charged twenty to thirty rupees a night. As I passed, they stared—at my clothing, my hair, my sandals—and turned away. Another do-gooder sent to save them or their children from a fallen life.

Hardly, I was thinking, when I saw a young girl, heavily made up, in front of a red bungalow. Her cheap orange sari couldn’t hide her swollen belly. As I came closer, she turned into a doorway. Was it—it couldn’t be—Lala’s niece? I was seeing things. But it made me wonder what had happened to the two servants Parvati had dismissed.

Soon enough, I came to the far end of the district, to the estates of wealthy courtesans—many of them Muslim. Like my old friends Hazi and Nasreen, these women were trained in the ancient arts of music, poetry and dance. They catered only tonawabs, royals and successful businessmen. They never opened their houses until evening and never to the public. A single night with them could cost a thousand rupees. They wouldn’t have needed someone like Hari to help them; they could afford doctors, specialists. They could also afford to buy my hair oils, skin-lightening creams and, of course, my herb sachets—which Malik delivered monthly.

I kept walking. Half an hour later, I came upon the European District, so-called because the French, Germans and Scandinavians lived here alongside well-to-do Indians. If not at his office or the Jaipur Club, Samir could be found here. Perhaps this had been my unwitting destination all along.

I looked for the trim, white bungalow. It was too small a property to employ a gatekeeper. I let myself into a tiny courtyard bordered by magenta roses. Their heady scent was strongest at this time of the evening.

The steps leading to the veranda were wide and graceful. When I knocked, I heard one of the upstairs shutters open. I stepped back and looked up. A handsome young woman in a georgette sari opened the second-floor window. I smiled and brought my hands together in greeting.

She hesitated. “I’ll come down.”

Soon enough, she was at the door: Samir’s mistress, Geeta.

All of Samir’s women had the same things in common. They were widows of a certain age, neatly coiffed, trim. Women who powdered their faces.

Samir would have thought a garden with only a single variety of flower dull, and his women differed in height, breast size, the shape of their noses, the curve of their lips. Geeta, a widow in her early thirties, was blessed with eyes as large as areca nuts. Her small nose and delicate mouth, pretty but unexceptional, drew even more attention to her eyes. She was holding a book in one hand.

I said, “I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour.”

She looked beyond me to the street, glancing in both directions. “Come in,” she said, opening the door wider to let me in.

“I need to speak to Samir Sahib,” I told her.

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